PATTAYA — Building on the theme for this year’s ADFEST, “Transform” Day 2 was filled with talks on transformative trends happening in the advertising industry. The first speaker of the day was Head of Facebook Creative Shop Southeast Asia Rafael Guida who showcased the social media platform’s capacity for video storytelling be it short-form, long-form, or immersive.
This year’s “Fabulous Four” then went on stage to debut and discuss their short films for the first time. This group of four young directors and filmmakers were chosen by Film Craft and New Director Lotus jury from among 38 script submissions and were given the chance to present their short films.
AOI Pro. Inc.’s Haruna Kaizuka presented “Beautiful Face”, a commentary on perceptions of beauty and how wrinkles should be treated as beauty marks. Huixin Law from Reservoir World Sdn Bhd, Kuala Lumpur created “Bird on a Wire” a film on the emotional turmoil within a woman who was raped and depressed and how she decided to keep moving forward. Shuhei Murata of Pyramid Film Quadra Inc. reminded viewers to look up from their devices and from their day-to-day grind to appreciate and enjoy the world around them with his film, “Upside Down”. Finally, Thuy Vy of The Directors Group, Melbourne presented “Still Life” a story about a girl whose camera takes photos of the future.
The afternoon session kicked off with Lucy Borne of Smoke & Mirrors who talked about the pains, challenges, and hurdles of managing the reputation of a creative company when it is merged with a bigger global entity. Generational differences, structural and work culture differences, and behavioral differences between the employees of the smaller and bigger companies are some of the difficulties encountered. However, Borne advised, companies and employees must learn to embrace the friction and understand the frustrations of one another to be able to communicate better.
Nick Wood, Chief Executive Officer and Creative Director of Syn Music, pushed for the use of music as a powerful storytelling tool and carrier of brand identity. According to Wood, music holds the power to intimately and immediately connect brands with their consumers.
The penultimate session of the day saw Cheil Associate Creative Director Jax Jung talk about Tech as a creative’s new BFF. According to Jung, it is an exciting time to be a creative because of what technology can do to bring ideas to life. Yet, she cautioned creatives against letting technology take over the creative process. “We need to build the ideas first and build it into tech,” she said.
Day 2 ended with a sit down conversation with renowned music video, commercial, and film director Joseph Kahn. He talked about his experience of doing all aspects of production and camera work.
